This is an open forum to discuss Shadow Path by P.L. Blair. Ms. Blair will be joining us and will take questions from readers. Anything and everything about the book can be discussed so be aware, there will most definitely be spoilers. Please no inappropriate comments, this forum is for a friendly discussion and questions with the author.

Since we all live in different areas of the country, and we all have different schedules, bookmark this page and come back to it as often as you want to see responses from the author as well as new comments and questions.

If you would like to join in on the book discussion, but have not yet read the book, Shadow Path, you are in luck! This book discussion will be open until January 26th. Just click on the book cover above and you will be directed to the Amazon purchase link.

Sandy ... Hi!
First, let me say a huge Thank You for hosting me today!
Stormcaller, Book 2 in the series, is with my publisher for final review and posting to ebook. I'm not sure when it will happen, but hopefully by the end of this month.
No firm schedule yet for Deathtalker or Sister Hoods, but the plan is to release them as ebooks before the end of the year.
In the meantime, all four books are available in paperback from Amazon and Barnes & Noble online.

Hi Pat,
I've read few of your books in the series and looking at the fantastic and magical world you created, I just have to know: what inspired you to start the series?
Details please :-)
Su halfwerk
PS: Sandy, kudos to you for connecting readers with their authors through this wonderful venue.

Hi, Su! Hi, Markee!
Markee, thank you for stopping by. I hope you'll come back with more questions.
Su ... I've been enthralled by folklore and mythology since I was 9 years old and discovered a book of Irish folk tales compiled by W.B. Yeats. So I think the seeds were planted then.
Then in high school, my French teacher introduced me to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and - like Samwise Gamgee - I fell in love with elves.
So all of that has been cooking around in my brain for decades. And I've wanted to be a writer since I was at least 7 years old. That's why I got into newspaper work - figured it was a way to make a living while I honed my writing skills. Then in 2006 - at the "tender" age of 59 - I finally decided if I was ever going to write books, I needed to get started. That was when I started seriously thinking about ideas. I was, in fact, initially torn between fantasy and detective novels (my other passion), so it just kind of seemed natural to me to combine the two.

P.L., I love the fact that you combined the two genres! I am mad about detective novels as well. I just can't get enough of them. I just read my first fantasy book last year. Can you believe it? It wasn't that I didn't want to read them, there was just other stuff out there that I knew I was interested in.

I think introducing the suspense genre in with the fantasy is brilliant! It draws more readers in and then hooks them with that wonderfully creative fantasy filled mind of yours.

Thanks, Sandy. I have to confess, When I decided to blend fantasy with detective, I wasn't really thinking of anything except combining my two loves - magic and mysteries. I've been a long-time reader of detective stories - starting with Sherlock Holmes, who's still my favorite.
Plus, I love the CSI-type shows on TV. I'm fascinated by forensic science. Of course then I gave Tevis the ability to (most of the time) "See" how someone has died just by laying his hands on a corpse ...
And kind of rewrote the forensics rules book. But it's been wonderfully fun! Still is, in fact ...

Here I will share another, not-so-secret secret ... Tevis Mac Leod, my elven detective, is kind of a combination of Sherlock Holmes (only my favorite of all fictional detectives) and Illya Kuryakin, the blond Russian spy in the old Man From UNCLE TV series. (I discovered a couple of years ago that Lois McMaster Bujold also modeled one of her first literary characters after Illya, so I feel like I'm in good company.)

I should have mentioned this earlier - my sincere apologies, Su. I can only plead that I wasn't yet awake enough to think about it.

Su Halfwerk is the talented lady who designed the Shadow Path book trailer that you've watched (and if you missed it somehow, please go back and take a look). Su chose the music as well, and blended it all into the whole. Su ... thank you!

The bond stays solid, Sandy. Without giving too much away, I will say that there isn't much change in their relationship in the first four books - which, together, span four or five months.
I touch on that in Stormcaller - Book 2 - in which Kat overhears Tevis telling Gairth why he (Tevis) believes that any romantic relationship between human and elf is doomed to hurt one partner or the other - or both.
Through the first four books, Tevis is insistent that he loves Kat as though she were his own sister.
But in Book 5 - "A Plague of Leprechauns," which I'm working on now - there will be a change in the relationship as Tevis comes to acknowledge - to himself - that his feelings for Kat are not those of a brother ...
Gee, I hope I'm not creating a spoiler here ...